Wedding Diary
Wedding invitations mailed, irritability rising

Wedding Diary is a column by Nu'uanu residents Connie Soga, 30, and Bret Moore, 27. The periodic report tracks the couple's progress as they near their Nov. 3 wedding, with about 300 guests, at the Sheraton Waikiki.

By Connie Soga and Bret Moore

Connie speaks on her ...

Bret and Connie stuff envelopes. They had planned to get the bridesmaids to hand-write them but did them by computer instead. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

The hardest part for me is to let go of this wedding and entrust it with someone else. It's not that I doubt our choice of wedding professionals. It's just very hard for me to hand this off to someone else. Maybe it's because I plan events for a living, or maybe it's just the discomfort of handing off responsibility for this one day that Bret and I have planned for almost a year. But in all honesty, it's kept me up a few nights wondering if the big day will be right.

I have to start taking my "nice pills" from this moment on. I've been finding myself snapping at Bret and being a little more irritable lately. I guess that's a normal occurrence with pre-wedding anxiety. But it's not a good thing as it gets closer to the big day. (Sorry, honey.)

Good and bad experiences: This was the month that Bret and I mailed off our wedding invitations. It took a while to get everyone's address and put our invitations and guest list together, but they are done and gone.

The big project in August had been getting everyone's address. Our friends move a lot, and we never really needed to know the addresses of the people from work. So collecting addresses was a big job for both of us. We've given about two weeks to RSVP and a month to plan the seating chart.

In doing our invitations, we were going to put the burden of addressing all of our invitations on our bridesmaids. But we got a better idea that was neater and more efficient. We know that addressing them by hand is a little more personal but they get sloppy after a while. We turned to our computer and caved in to technology. We programmed our laser printer to address each invitation with ornate calligraphy right onto the envelopes, and they turned out great! It was much cheaper than hiring a calligrapher, and no tired hands!

We also went back to our favorite paper store, the Paperie in Kahala Mall, to order our wedding thank you cards and my bridal shower invitations. We received our first wedding gift already — a generous contribution to our LRFF (Living Room Furniture Fund) so it was good to have the thank-you cards ready.

Lessons learned: Although we love how we did our envelopes, we wasted several at first in trying to get the alignment and font right. When you order invitations, you rarely get a lot of "practice" envelopes, so we were short. We had to go out and buy more to make up for the difference. I guess you have to account for some margin of error; every bride I have talked to has made mistakes that have cost them a few envelopes. This throws off your envelope-to-invitation ratio, so make sure you have some spares from the start.

Bret speaks on his ...

State of mind: Leading up to the wedding, my state of mind is well ... missing! This is a very busy time of year for me. In my military job, we are preparing for the grandmother of all inspections, and the wedding on top of this is all starting to mount up. I am a little worried about how things are going to go. In the military, we are taught to make sure things go right and by the book. This is a bit more liberal, so Connie and I have to sit back and see how things unfold. Connie constantly tells me that I can't sit and watch everything go and run it like I was a drill sergeant; I am going to have to trust the people Connie and I have put in place.

Connie has said that she is a bit more snappy, and I will agree. I, on the other hand, have been a glowing ray of wonderful sunshine! Nah, just kidding. I am a little more testy now, also. I am growing tired of answering the "Are you ready yet?"question. Not that I am mad at the person asking it, because I know they are authentic when they ask.

All in all, I think Connie and I are handling the situation very well. I will say that had Connie and I planned differently (if we had failed to save, pay everything off early, and organize well at the start), then we would be a bit more insane at this point in the game.

Good and bad experiences: Although I had little to do with the planning phases, I think things went very smoothly. Connie plans events for a living, and they are wonderful. Having her plan and organize things has been a blessing.

Since the last article only one things jumps out at me, and that is that my best friend of 15 years is unable to attend. This took some of the wind from my sails, as we grew up together and shared a lot good memories.

I discovered that anyone you have ever met in your entire life expects to be invited to your wedding. Unfortunately, when you pay by the plate, then add the cost of all the other things, this is not practical. We had a set number of people that we could reasonably afford, and this means that some people got left off the list. This is not because we don't want them to share in our joy. We just have to stay within our budget.

Lessons learned: There are a variety of ways to make your wedding a bit easier on the wallet. This month, we discovered that printing our envelopes from our home computer is one way, finding talented friends that are willing to help out with their skills is another. If you evaluate your resources, you can come up with some pretty good ways to save money and still get what you want.